The University of Arizona Press

This book explains how Indigenous peoples organize their economies for good living by supporting relationships between humans and the natural world. This work argues that creating such relationships is a major alternative to economic models that stress individualism and domination of nature.

O’odham artist Michael Chiago Sr.’s paintings provide a window into the lifeways of the O’odham people. This book offers a rich account of how Tohono O’odham and Akimel O’odham live in the Sonoran Desert now and in the recent past.

We are thrilled that Michael Chiago won a Southwest Book of the Year Award! Check out the great book launch we had for Michael Chiago, in collaboration with Western National Parks Association!

In this book, disappearance of a young Choctaw leads Detective Monique Blue Hawk to investigate a little-known ceremonial dance. As she traces the steps of the missing man, she discovers that the seemingly innocuous Renewal Dance is not what it appears to be. After Monique embarks on a journey that she never thought possible, she learns that the past and future can converge to offer endless possibilities for the present. She must also accept her own destiny of violence and peacekeeping.

Read a brief interview with the author here. Listen to the author speak about her work on Native American Calling here. Are you attending the Tucson Festival of Books this year? Catch Devon Mihesuah and other UA Press authors at signings and on panels!

In Raven’s Echo, Tlingit artist and poet Robert Davis Hoffmann’s poetry grapples with reconstructing a life within Tlingit tradition and history. The destructiveness of colonialism brings a profound darkness to some of the poems in Raven’s Echo, but the collection also explores the possibility of finding spiritual healing in the face of historical and contemporary traumas.

Watch the poet discuss his work here.

This ethnography examines the role of language and embodied behaviors in producing a congregational split in a Catholic parish serving Guatemala’s Q’eqchi’ Maya people. Drawing on a range of methods from linguistic and cultural anthropology, author Eric Hoenes del Pinal examines how the introduction of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement in the parish produced a series of debates between parishioners that illustrate the fundamentally polyvocal nature of Catholic Christianity.

Read field notes from the author here.

Visualizing Genocide engages the often sparse and biased discourses of genocidal violence against Indigenous communities documented in exhibits, archives, and museums. Essayists and artists from a range of disciplines identify how Native knowledge can be effectively incorporated into memory spaces.

Read an excerpt from the book here.

From the early colonial period to the War on Terror, translation practices have facilitated colonialism and resulted in epistemicide, or the destruction of Indigenous and subaltern knowledge. This book discusses translation-as-epistemicide in the Americas and providing accounts of decolonial methods of translation.

Reading the Illegible weaves together the stories of the peoples, places, objects, and media that surrounded the creation of the anonymous Huarochirí Manuscript (c. 1598–1608) to demonstrate how Andean people endowed the European technology of writing with a new social role in the context of a multimedia society.

Critically examining the United States as a settler colonial nation, this literary analysis recenters Oceti Sakowin (historically known to some as the Sioux Nation) women as their tribes’ traditional culture keepers and culture bearers, while offering thoughtful connections between settler colonialism, literature, nationalism, and gender.

Centering historically neglected Indigenous voices as its primary source material, author David Martínez shows how Carlos Montezuma’s correspondence and interactions with his family and their community influenced his advocacy—and how his important work in Arizona specifically motivated his work on a national level.

This deep dive into the coal industry and the Navajo Nation captures a pivotal moment in the history of energy shift and tribal communities. Geographer Andrew Curley spent more than a decade documenting the rise and fall coal, talking with those affected most by the changes—Diné coal workers, environmental activists, and politicians.

Featuring analysis from historical, ethnological, and philosophical perspectives, this volume dissects Indigenous Amazonians’ beliefs about urban imaginaries and their ties to power, alterity, domination, and defiance. Contributors analyze how ambiguous urban imaginaries express a singular view of cosmopolitical relations, how they inform and shape forest-city interactions, and the history of how they came into existence, as well as their influence in present-day migration and urbanization.

This comparative work dispels the harmful myth that Native people are unfit stewards of their sacred places. This work establishes Indigenous preservation practices as sustaining approaches to the caretaking of the land that embody ecological sustainability, spiritual landscapes, and community well-being.

‘Āina Hānau / Birth Land is a powerful collection of new poems by Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) poet Brandy Nālani McDougall. These poems cycle through sacred and personal narratives while exposing and fighting ongoing American imperialism, settler colonialism, militarism, and social and environmental injustice to protect the ʻāina and its people.

We are thrilled that Brandy Nālani McDougall was selected as the new Hawai’i state poet laureate!